IE: How old are you now and where did you grow up?

Sean: Old enough to know better/stupid enough to do it again. Why? Is this an insurance application? I grew up in Soho, Manhattan (back when it was an abandoned warehouse district inhabited by a FEW artists), bordering Little Italy and Chinatown, I went to grade school and junior high on the Lower East Side back in the 70’s. Before kids from Queens discovered it.

IE: How old were you when you first started getting interested in drawing and as a kid what kind of stuff we're you into drawing?

Sean: From day one! Seriously, since I could hold a crayon. The usual, army men killing other army men, cowboys killing bandits. Indians killing cowboys. Even then, I knew cowboys were the bad guys and not in a good way, but in a genocide way. I’ve got drawings of reform school kids beating the shit out of Richie Rich (fuck you 1%’s!). Then I moved onto robots and monsters fighting each other. Comical stuff influenced by Don Martin out of Mad Magazine. I moved onto super heroes, then barbarians, then maniac murderers and finally back to comical stuff – but heavily influenced by 60’s underground comics.

IE: How did you first get involved with drawing stuff for bands and what we're some of your earliest band drawings that you recall?

Sean: Originally, I just loved punk rock and started drawing punk type stuff (John Holmstrom’s work for Punk Magazine and the Ramones were very influential on me). My buddies really liked that stuff. They eventually formed bands so naturally I did art for them. Armed Citizens were the first, then the Cro-Mags and so on.

IE: How were you introduced to punk and hardcore music?  Did you find the music first and then want to draw stuff for certain bands or was it reverse where you were drawing for people you knew in bands and that helped you find the music?

Sean: My friend David played “Never Mind The Bollocks” for me and that pretty much changed my life.

IE: I remember many kids who went to hardcore shows in the 80's were heavily into writing graffiti. We're you one of them and if so how deep into it did you get?

Sean: I did graff from ’77 to 78, honestly I was whack, but it was fun being so naughty! My friend Bernardo turned me onto that scene and he was really good and a GREAT artist for a kid his age. Sadly he didn’t make it past 21. By the time hardcore rolled around that was well behind me. Back in those days a lot of kids stopped at 15 because they didn’t want to get J.D. cards. Why that was relevant to anything I don’t know, maybe holding onto the slim idea of a middle class life. Of course the kids from my era that didn’t stop blew up in the early 80’s. I was very envious.

IE: What was the first punk or hardcore show that you attended?  Do you remember who played and any details from the show? Where was the show at?

Sean: Does Stimulators/Bad Brains count? Max’s Kansas City 1980 back then it was just called Punk Rock. My first “official” hardcore show was @ A7 in ’81. I was too drunk to remember who the fuck I saw.

IE: How many album and record covers do you think you have drawn?

Sean: Really not many 10-20 I think. My hype is way bigger than my output.

IE: What are some of the album covers or flyers that you are most proud of?

Sean: Crumbsuckers, best thing I did from that era.

IE: Is drawing to you something that you have to get in a zone for or can you just pick up a marker at any time and just start drawing away? What do you usually do to get in that zone if that is the case?

Sean: I draw anytime anywhere on anything with anything. It’s like breathing. For years I struggled with it and didn’t enjoy doing finished work, but after a while it wasn’t such an insurmountable task. I never drew under the influence of anything besides caffeine. 

IE: I want to focus in on two album covers that you are quite known for and try to get some more insight.  First is Agnostic Front’s “Cause For Alarm”. Can you take us through how this iconic cover came to be? Did they ask for anything specific?  Did they tell you the title would be “Cause For Alarm”?  How long did it take you to complete?

Sean: It took a couple of months I think. I was very intimidated by the idea of doing an actual album cover for a band as revered as A.F. Plus, I was actually getting paid and by a real record label no less! Roger approached me (he cleared it with the Cro-Mags first ‘cos I was pretty much exclusive to them), asked me if I’d depict hell, sounded easy enough. I’m not sure when I found out the name of the record. I do know they did that as a joke on Alex ‘cos his band was CFA (Cause For Alarm) and they were a lot bigger than AF was back in the day…sort of tweaking his nose a bit and Kabula played bass for CFA in one of their line-ups.

IE: The second one is the Crumbsuckers “Life Of Dreams” and I ask the same questions as with the previous question…

Sean: Those cats had the dumbest ideas for that one. Ya’know wizards and shit! I told them that the fantasy shit didn’t fit them. They had a totally modern sound and I wanted to represent that. I showed them some sketches and they caught my drift. Sometimes it pays to let the artist do his thing.

IE: You are obviously still drawing these days with some recent work with some books that are hardcore/punk related. If someone reading this wanted you to do something for their band do you still take on new projects or do you pick/choose the ones that you want to do?

Sean: I do. But it’s really hit or miss with me. For years I turned people down because I felt this nostalgia shit was very anti-punk, and it is. After a while I start doing hardcore work in the vein attempt to recapture some of that magic. No luck. Not to sound ungrateful –some of the bands I’ve worked with are really great, doing their own thing are die-hard fans etc... I just find it kind of a drag re-hashing the same old shit. Hey, cool things happened back in ’85, no doubt! Just as cool things happened in ’54, ’67, ’73 etc... Why not do some cool shit in 2014? Come on! Everyone plays exceptionally well, cops the best shit from other eras sings the same old “why… why… you… you…” refrain and what do you get? Nothing. No one is struggling to find a new sound –that’s where the fuckin’ magic is. I remember when hardcore kids were the wise-ass little brothers of punk. But that changed pretty quickly. Hardcore kids tend to be knuckleheads who believe the hype and are as arrogant as they are ignorant about the world. Listen to the Minute Men or the Big Boys… that shit was hardcore! No one would classify that as hardcore now. They’d be laughed out of the club for not being hard enough, stupid enough or straight enough. I know I’ve rambled off topic a bit but I’m trying to explain my reservations about this “encased in amber” approach to music (and the art that represents it).

I understand why, and I want the same for my heroes (I pretty much hate anything Stiff Little Fingers did after “Nobody’s Heroes”), but it’s really not fair not to let them grow in new directions. When I was 17 I smashed and burned all my Clash records when “London Calling” came out. So I understand the passion. But seriously that’s juvenile and cuts you off from discovering new, cool things to get excited about. But hey I still go crazy over some esoteric bit rock’n’roll trivia. So I’m as much stuck in the past as the next guy. I just hope I temper it with a more open mind than I used to.

IE: Anything else that you would like to add before we wrap things up?

Sean: Nah, maybe just to be more open minded and stop feeling singled out. We all have our crosses to bear.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/397400873656799